dustland fairytale
by kinky boot fiend
Summary: I wouldn't dream so high - luxord/selphie/wakka - circus au, oneshot.


_dustland fairytale_

-x-

It was the summer before Wakka's last year of high school when the travelling circus came to Destiny Islands for one week, and of course he and his pretty little girlfriend in her pretty little yellow dress went. They went twice, even. It had been Selphie's idea to go again, really, the place had fascinated her and Wakka wasn't one to deny his girl anything.

It wasn't a big-top circus, it was one of those smaller circuses full of caravans and had ferris wheels and _circus-folk_. There was a fire-breather, a woman who could throw knives on the bull's-eye every time and a blue-haired man who could tell fortunes by the planets and stars.

When Selphie asked if they could go one more night, one more time because she hadn't done everything yet even though she had, Wakka hesitantly said yes. They had their caricatures drawn by the sweet young blonde (_again_) and tried the game of darts (he could never win her the stuffed moogle, even when he tried to bribe the guy with the eye-patch) and listened to the sitar-player as they watched the stars. The early hours approached and the night drew to a close, Wakka walked Selphie home to her pleasant two-story house where her librarian mother waited on the porch.

Her father walked out as he kissed her goodnight, she hurried inside with a backwards glance.

Before anything could be said, Wakka made a quick assumption that there was something Selphie's dad wanted to say about knowing his daughter was growing up and he knew they were fond of each other and how _boys and girls have certain needs_ and then Wakka would reassure him that nothing had happened or would happen until they both graduated. But this was nothing like that, instead Mr. Tilmitt asked questions about the circus, and why they went so often. He asked Wakka to stop taking her, for their dreams for her of medical school and becoming _their famous doctor daughter _were slipping even farther than she was from them.

They asked him not to take her again, no matter what.

Wakka agreed, knowing all the while that they would forbid her and he would sneak her out anyway when she asked him to so they could go again.

_dustland fairytale beginning  
just another white trash county kiss  
_'_61, long brown hair, foolish eyes  
__he looked just like you'd want him to  
__some kind of slick chrome american prince_

When night fell, Wakka told his father he was going to pick up Selphie and go to the circus. His father told him Selphie's parents had called and asked to stop him if he went to bring her to the circus again. His father let him go anyway, telling Wakka he knew how girls could be.  
As she climbed down the vines growing conveniently outside her window, Mr. Tilmitt's words echoed... _slipping even farther than she was from them_. Selphie turned when the growth along the house ended and Wakka held his arms around, she jumped.

"Babe, anything you wanna talk about?" He felt her arms unwrap from his neck and push away. "I just feel like you love this circus more than me, ya?"

She giggled, grabbed his hand and started them off toward the circus. "Aw, Wakka, you _know_ I love you."

"C'mon, I'm serious, ya!" Selphie didn't reply and continued dragging him along. Wakka stopped, and she kept walking towards the lights in the distance.

He watched her go, and considered ringing her parent's doorbell and telling them how she had disobeyed them. But he just followed her, even though they were a good fifty yards apart. When he caught up, he didn't say anything and walked twenty feet behind her. She walked with a purpose, and Wakka didn't quite understand her obsession. She headed for the cards booth, where you played cards against a blonde man with a thick, deep British accent. They had gone seven times the past nights. Wakka had brushed it off as Selphie liking the gamesman's voice or his charm or maybe just the game itself, let the casual touches they shared go because he probably flirted with all the pretty girls who came to his stand.

The man looked up when Selphie approached, Wakka saw something in his crystal blue eyes that scared him, intimidated him. Wakka hid behind the trailer a few yards away, the paint looked chipped and old. It had looked fresh and new and colourful last night.

Wakka watched his girlfriend wrap her shaking little hands around the gambler's broad shoulders and said something the red-haired boy couldn't quite make out. The man from the circus placed a hand on her waste and directed her towards a cluster of tent far from the commotion, where Wakka was sure the performers slept.

_blue jean serenade, moon river what'd you do to me?  
__I don't believe you  
__saw cinderella in a party dress  
__she was looking for a nightgown_

_He's going to fuck my girlfriend_. Wakka took four steps toward the tents and stopped, realizing she would never forgive him if he did this. Let her have her fun, let her lose herself to some man who would be gone by the end of the week. She would scurry back in tears and they would share their grad year together, the blitzball team captain and _pretty little cheerleader._

It wasn't until the card-playing man had walked several feet past Wakka, that he realized Selphie was still in the tent.

"What are you doing, ya? She's too young for you!"

"I'm not quite sure what you mean," the man continued to walk towards the trailer Wakka had hid behind.

Wakka ran after him, "Stop, brudda!"

Still, he continued to walk.

"You can't take her from me, she was mine first!"

The man whirled around, staring down the seventeen year old boy. "No," he said it with such force and Wakka no longer felt like the strong boyfriend who would try and defend Selphie's honour, "She's not yours, she never has been, and she is _not mine _either. She can make her own decisions and she does not belong to anybody, so perhaps you should run home, little boy."

"What if I tell her parents?" It sounded childish and Wakka knew it, but it was all he had. He couldn't compete with a taller, stronger man who had been toughened by years of living with a travelling circus.

"Indeed, what if you do?"

"Maybe I will!"

"Fine, go ahead, boy," the man spat back, turning toward the caravan. He placed his hand on the door handle and turned back, staring down the younger ginger. He chuckled, and entered the trailer.

_I saw the devil wrapping up his hands  
__he's getting ready for a showdown  
__I saw the minute that I turned away  
I got my money on a palm tonight_

Half an hour later, the blonde left the ring master's trailer. He brushed by Wakka, speaking barely above a whisper as he did, "I see you're still here."

_change came in disguise of revelation, set his soul on fire  
__she says she always knew he'd come around  
__and the decades disappear like sinking ships  
__but we persevere, god gives us hope_

Instead of running after the man who went by Luxord, from what Wakka had overheard when he was eavesdropping, he knocked on the trailer door.

"Come in." The voice was deep, and almost malicious. Wakka cowered in the door frame, a tall man with golden eyes looked at him with questioning eyes.

"Uh, who's that guy? The one who just walked out, ya?"

The ring master cocked his head to one side. "Why?"

Wakka lost his nerve. "Nevermind, ya."

He walked toward the tents and looked in. Selphie was sitting on Luxord's lap, crying into his striped button-down and mumbling about needing to leave this place. When the man promised her he would take her with them, Wakka knew this was not about an easy fuck.

Before he went home, Wakka played another game of darts. He won the moogle this time.

_but we still fear what we don't know  
the mind is poison  
castles in the sky sit stranded, vandalized  
a drawbridge is closin'_

Wakka didn't see Selphie until the last day the circus was in town.

The whole town showed up to see them off, the mayor wished them success in the other cities they visited, and requested they return next summer. Wakka looked through the crowd, but never found his girlfriend. When he finally paid attention to the presentation, he realized that Selphie was next to the man named Luxord. He had one arm wrapped around her small shoulders, his face nuzzled in her neck, whispering sweet nothings to her.

She was smiling and playing with his polka-dotted tie. Selphie's parents were mortified.

After the mayor finished, the circus-goers broke into applause and the performers scattered to their stands. Mr. Tilmitt, red-faced and lived, marched up to the ring-master and started shouting incoherent nonsense about his daughter's innocence. The ring master's passive expression failed to change. Mrs. Tilmitt began to cry when he simply walked away.

They assumed their pretty little daughter would be home late tonight.

The circus stayed open until five o'clock of the next morning, Wakka was the last to leave.

In the cool Sunday air, thirteen caravans drove out of the island town while the civilians were in church. Selphie's parents did not attend the sermon. They called Wakka's house, and Wakka told them she would be home later tonight. He didn't have the heart to tell them otherwise. At ten, Wakka called and asked if Selphie could stay the night; they agreed hesitantly. He promised them that they would sleep in separate rooms.

It wasn't until six the next day that Selphie's father knocked on the door and started asking questions. Their first thought was that Selphie was angry with them for forbidding her from the circus. Their second thought was the blonde-haired man from the circus took her. Despite everything his brain told him was wrong; Wakka told them it was their first thought, and that she just needed another night. He would stall them from calling the cops long enough for them to get miles away.

_  
saw cinderella in a party dress  
but she was looking for a night gown  
I saw the devil wrapping up his hands  
he's getting ready for the showdown_

Eventually they figured it out, but Mr. Tilmitt was too upset to ask why Wakka had kept the truth hidden. When Mrs. Tilmitt asked, she implied that he had been hiding it in hopes she would return. He said yes.

The police were notified across the country. Wakka prayed for Selphie's happiness at church the next week.

_  
I saw the ending when they turned the page  
I took my money and I ran away, straight to the valley of the great divide  
out where the dreams are high  
__out where the wind don't blow  
_

It was the day after Christmas when the police returned Selphie to her parents. They had found the circus miles away, in another city where the laws were easier to bend.

She was to return to school in the winter term, and as long as she was tutored four days a week, she would still be able to graduate at the end of the year. Wakka brought over a late Christmas present, a stuffed moogle, and asked to see her. Mr. Tilmitt told her she had work to catch up on, that he'd see her when school started, that she was still a little fragile.

Wakka thought he understood.

_I hear the good girls die, and the sky won't snow  
I hear the birds don't sing, I hear the fields don't grow  
out here bell don't ring, out here the bell don't ring  
out here the good girls die  
_

When Selphie returned for second term, she was different. She was offered her place on the cheer squad back, but refused it. Most people thought it was because she still had her pride and didn't want to take it out of pity. She still hung out with her usual crowd, the blitzball team and the cheerleaders though she didn't say much anymore. After one month, Wakka asked Selphie out on a date, and she agreed.

He thought things would get back to normal, but sitting in the restraint booth sipping coca-cola seemed different, maybe because of the silence.

"She doesn't wear the yellow dress anymore." It was the first time someone had mentioned Selphie's change. Wakka had thought he was the only one who noticed, but he should've realized her best friend, Kairi, who had nearly sunk into depression for first term would've noticed too. It was Kairi who had found her half-dead on the school bathroom floor, parallel cuts running up her arm and blood everywhere. She had dragged her best friend into the second floor hallway, screaming and crying for help and Wakka was the first to reach her body. He collected her in his arms and whispered not to give up, not to let go.

Selphie looked him in the eyes, and Wakka couldn't bring himself to let her get into the ambulance when it arrived.

The paramedics mistook the gesture, and wrestled the dying girl out of his arms, reassuring him that she would be fine and that he could hold her when they had fixed her. They didn't understand.

"I don't think we'll ever see her again," Kairi whispered to Wakka, her hand crawling into his.

At three o'clock in morning on a cold February day, Selphie flat lined._  
_It wasn't surprising to Wakka and Kairi, perhaps it was to her parents, or perhaps they also knew, deep down, that Selphie had given up her will to live when she was taken by the police and her friends from the circus were put under trial. She never found out what had happened to her lover or any of the others, but she had reasoned that she would never see them again.

He realizes that asking her out wasn't the right move, and it probably wounded her more than he could imagine. Wakka wondered why she had accepted.

_now cinderella don't you go to sleep  
it's such a bitter form of refuge  
oh, don't you know the kingdom's under siege  
and everybody needs you_

It rained on the day of her funeral.

Everybody wore black, save Kairi, who wore a pretty little yellow dress that was recognized by her loved ones and brought tears quickly to Wakka's eyes.

The entire school showed up, including teachers. They stood in one clump apart from Selphie's family, mourning her in a different way. Only the students and her parents knew the reason for her death. There was a silent understanding, if anybody asked how she died, you either didn't know or you made something up.

Kairi gave the eulogy. It was longer than necessary, and she rambled for most of it, but it was perfect. She spoke about how bright Selphie had been, how her happiness shone through all the time and never spoke a word about how sad she had been the past month. The last words of the eulogy were about Selphie's love of the circus.

The funeral ended, and all the attendees made their own way back to their homes. There was no reception, Selphie's parents couldn't handle that. Not yet. Wakka placed his flower on the coffin last, and told the gravediggers to go home. He would bury her himself. They hesitantly agreed after a short argument. As they walked away he could hear them talking about returning later tonight to finish, that the boy was just upset. Wakka picked up a shovel and began scooping the dirt over her coffin.

Nearly an hour later, after the coffin was half-buried, another man approached the gravesite and picked up a shovel. Wakka did not look up, maybe because he didn't have the energy, maybe because he was just too focused to notice. He joined in burying the girl.

They finished quickly.

Wakka had thought the man was her father, his father, or maybe Tidus or Sora or even Riku, but it wasn't. The man placed a yellow tulip on the top of the headstone.

"She turned eighteen today," Wakka said quietly.

A tear slid off Luxord's nose. "I didn't come for the funeral."

_is there still magic in the midnight sun  
or did you leave it back in '61?  
in the cadence of a young man's eyes  
I wouldn't dream so high_

-x-

sooo... this is my otp and I don't think it could/would have a happy ending. and I fail at updating anything so I'll strick to oneshots mostly, now. annndd... Luxord + multiple patterns + circusfun = sexy? yess. Xaldin is the circus bodyguard XD probably tons of mistakes... unedited and unbeta'd, sorreh.


End file.
